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Pedal to the floor
Thinkin' of you more
Gotta get us to the show
California here we come
Right back where we started from

-Phantom Planet 'California'


I was lucky that the flight from Atlanta to LA was short. It gave me little time to be introspective and wonder again if I was making the right decision or not.

I didn't bother getting a rental car. Instead I just got a car at LAX to take me to Howie's house. Keeping with my plan to get re-conntected with the other guys, I'd decided to stay with Howie instead of staying in a hotel. That was probably the best course of action. Howie obviously didn't mind, and I really didn't want to stay with Kevin. Besides, Nick was already staying with him.

That was a BS excuse since Kevin's house was huge. But it was the one I was sticking with.

Of course, the drive from LAX to Howie's place was long. The highway was always backed up and we were stuck in traffic.

Still, it was sort of useless to be wondering if I should have come here or not. I was already here!

Leighanne hadn't wanted me to leave. We'd sat silently in the airport in Atlanta until I absolutely had to leave to go through security. You'd think that I was leaving for months. She'd be back on Friday to meet us in Milwaukee.

I still didn't know this felt so strange and foreign. It wasn't like I'd spent nearly the past ten years with these guys. At risk of sounding stuck-up, we'd conquered the world together. We'd shut down Times Square together.

But it felt so different now. Like we'd split up in an angry haste and were now trying desperately to show the world that everything was completely fine.

I didn't even know where to start. And maybe it was all in my head. But things felt different. Now that I'd had a taste of what normalcy felt like I wanted to cling to it. But I also wanted to go back on tour and have things go back to the way things were. Back before AJ's problems and back before we were burnt out.

I just wanted everything to be fun again. I wanted to enjoy it again and not dread it.

At least I wasn't dreading going to Howie's house. I was looking forward to seeing him.

It was Nick and Kevin that I was dreading. And I still didn't really understand why.

~~~


“Hey, Brian! Glad you're here, man.”

Brian showed up at my doorstep right on schedule. Not surprising, really. He's always on time. It's Nick or AJ who are always late – and on rare occasions Kevin. Though no one would ever call him on it.

“Thanks,” he replied, leaning in to hug me tightly. I could tell he was really happy to see me because it was a full on hug, not one of those half-assed one arm things.

Which was sort of strange to me. But the whole idea of him coming to LA early was strange to me.

It was also strange to have him in my house.

“Soooo,” he said, rolling on his feet a little as he stood in my front entrance.

I shrugged. If him coming to LA was strange, him staying with me was even weirder. We didn't usually spend this much time together. Not when we didn't have a whole bunch of work stuff to do, anyway.

“You want to go see what Kevin's up to?” I asked, figuring he probably wanted to visit with everyone else as much as he wanted to visit with me.

“Nah,” he yawned, and then laughed. “I was on too long of a flight to deal with him.”

I raised my eyebrow. The flight from Atlanta to LA is really short. But I didn't call him on it. Instead, I laughed as well. These was no use in arguing.

“Could go walk around the pier,” I suggested.

And Brian nodded, his eye lighting up. “Yeah, yeah that sounds great.”

It wasn't much, but at least it gave us something to do while we waited for the tour to start up again and distract us.

~~~


“No answer at Howie's place,” I said to no one in particular, hanging up my phone after I'd heard Howie's bright answering machine recording.

I sighed, walking into the kitchen where Kris was preparing dinner. I didn't even bother going to talk to Nick – he was still cooped up in the living room with that stupid game of his.

“Guess Howie's not coming for dinner,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist.

“We invited Howie for dinner?”

“I was going to. Since Brian's here and all.”

“Brian's here?”

I whipped my head around, only to see Nick standing in the hall of the kitchen. He smirked, walking over to us and sticking his hand into the salad Kris was making.

She slapped him away, but not before he was able to grab a cubed potato. “Mmm,” he laughed, making a big show a licking his lips. “So,” he continued, looking at me and probably knowing better than to try and steal anymore food. “Brian's here?”

~~~


I looked at Kevin and waiting for an answer. That guy talks slow, but he's not usually this bad. I don't know why I was so interested in hearing about Brian, but it was sort of weird to me that he'd shown up a few days before he absolutely had to.

“Yeah, he's staying with Howie,” Kevin finally said. See Kevin, was that so hard?

And I laughed, because picturing Brian and Leighanne taking over Howie's house for a few days was hysterical. Howie's place would probably be completely redecorated by the time they left.

“And Howie allowed the aspiring interior decorator into his home? His lamps from Africa will be the first thing to go,” I laughed again, grinning at Kevin.

“Leighanne's not with him,” he replied shortly, giving me a look. Oh come on Kevin, don't act like I was making fun of Leighanne for no reason. There's a reason you knew exactly who I was talking about.

Still, husband was here without his wife?

“Huh?”

Kevin rolled his eyes like he was irritated with me. “She's not here. She's still in Atlanta.”

I bit my lip and looked at the ground. What the hell was Brian doing here without her? It couldn't be that he wanted to chill out with us, could it? There was no way. He didn't give two shits about us ever since he got married. Actually, he didn't give two shits about us ever since he'd met her.

So what the fuck was he doing here? And why the fuck did I care so much? It wasn't like we were best friends anymore. And it definitely wasn't like he was going to show up here asking me to play basketball with him. He probably didn't even want to see me.

“Are they coming over?” I asked, looking around again at the food Kris was preparing.

Kevin shook his head. “Nope.”

I shrugged and went back into the front room to continue playing my game. See? He wasn't here to see us.